Mark Flood: Gratest Hits

Throughout his three decades-long career, Houston-based artist Mark Flood has created collages, paintings, and sculptures, and has altered found ephemera that serve to exuberantly disclose and critique the perverse ethics of the art world. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present Mark Flood: Gratest Hits, the first survey of his work, with pieces dating from the 1980s to 2016. Gratest Hits shows the deep wisdom and humor of Flood’s work while ultimately revealing the true achievement of an artist who has produced many highly praised works and has maintained an active career despite remaining barely visible at the museum level.

Gratest Hits presents two of Flood’s largest, most exquisite lace paintings; site-specific installations made of absurd pseudo-posters, multi-media, ephemera, collages, text paintings, and documents from the last decade; and a suite of recent works including corporate logo paintings, all organized into a vast tableau. Viewers to the exhibition are invited to act as critics. A mound of 5,000 “LIKE” paintings, mirroring the Facebook world we live in, can be placed anywhere in the exhibition to which viewers are drawn. Programming includes two screenings of his full-length movie Art Fair Fever.

Flood began his artistic career in the now legendary rock band Culturcide. The punk culture that birthed Flood was known for being critical of compromise. Flood similarly judges harshly the institutions of the art world—from grant-making agencies to museums—that create bureaucracies between art and the public; instead he favors the crazy democracy of passionate collectors and prickly critics and of socially irresponsible art makers. Known for his prankster antics and mocking commentary, Flood continues to challenge what he considers to be the questionable values held dear by our society in general and the contemporary art world in particular, making his ethically coherent work irreverent, ironic, and self-deprecating. Aware of the profound contradiction of his views and this conspicuously institutional survey, Gratest Hits highlights Flood’s uncomfortable relationship with art world success and praise, and pokes fun at the art establishment and what it means to be deemed a “great” artist.

Mark Flood: Gratest Hits is curated by Bill Arning, Director, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Public programs

In conversation: Mark Flood with Bill Arning
Saturday, April 30, 2pm

Musiqa concert
Thursday, May 5, 6:30pm

Screening and discussion: Art Fair Fever
Thursday, May 12, 6:30pm
Screening followed by a discussion with Bill Arning and David Breslin, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator, Menil Drawing Institute.

Artist talk: Skylar Fein
Saturday, June 25, 2pm

Book signing, screening, and discussion: Art Fair Fever
Thursday, July 21
Book signing, 6pm
Screening, 6:30pm
Mark Flood will sign copies of his catalogue Mark Flood: Gratest Hits. Screening followed by a discussion with Bill Arning and Stephanie Mitchell, Executive Director, Lawndale Art Center.

20Hertz: Mydolls
Thursday, July 28, 6:30pm
Discussion followed by performance by the legendary Houston punk outfit Mydolls.